The Catholic Diocese of East Anglia

Peterborough St Peter and All Souls - Standing Together Achieving Miracles

Help us to raise £1.3m to repair St Peter and All Souls Roman Catholic Church and help prevent it from closure. Our church has been at the heart of Peterborough's diverse community for over 125 years, and we need your help!
0%
£3,903
raised of £1,300,000 target
RCN 278742

Story

Why we need your help!

Help us to raise £1.3m to repair St Peter and All Souls Roman Catholic Church and help prevent it from closure. Our church has been at the heart of Peterborough's diverse community for over 125 years, and we need your help!

MP's Support

Local MP Paul Bristow is fully behind the campaign. On a recent visit he said: 'He said; The church is at the heart of the Catholic community in our City. As well as English - we have Eastern European, Indian, African, Irish, Filipino, and East Timorese Catholic communities in Peterborough. But the 125 year old church walls are falling down. They have been temporarily bolstered but need expensive and extensive work. To lose the church would be unthinkable. We can do this! And I promise to stand with the Church and the Catholic community as we try to raise these funds.'

Testimonies from our community

These are the personal stories of the many parishioners, for whom, St. Peter and All Souls Church building and community means so much: 'It has been at the heart of raising our young families - irrespective of our backgrounds - race, age, gender to name a few. The community we see here is rich in experience, culture, wisdom, talent, faith and love. It is important for us to maintain this building and the sanctity of our Catholic beliefs. This church is considered as the mother of the Catholic churches in Peterborough. We need to continue to lead on and grow our faith for our fellow human beings, and our children and generations to come.'

'The church means family to me, a place where I meet others not blood related but related through Christ. It is a safe haven for me and that is why I am vested in this cause.'

'Our Parish is where we renew our spirit, our whole family belong to the church, we are united together with all the different communities and have formed a partnership in pray and worship. During Covid our communities have been tested and those who could not attend mass were able to view online via you-tube. Our church is reactive to situations and is a pillar to the community of Peterborough.'

The church community is made up of Portuguese, English, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, Filipino, Indian, African, Spanish, East Timorese, Eastern European people's and is known for providing a warm welcome to people of all nationalities.

A little bit about our Church

Restoration of the Catholic Church following the Reformation did not happen until the 1850s. Before that, members of the Catholic Church in England were not permitted to build new churches nor to practice their faith openly. Following the restoration, building programmes began. The building of St Peter and All Souls was completed around 1896. The builders were from two local Catholic families and, bearing in mind the small number of parishioners at the time, the work was concluded on a tight budget. The foundations for the church have, over several years, become unstable, due in part to the fact that the site was formerly a fishpond belonging to the Cathedral properties. We now have a situation where the walls of the church are beginning to lean outwards, and the church is cracking under the strain of the movement. It is currently being supported by scaffold buttresses on either side of the building and movement is monitored by sensors placed at various points on the outside. Our church is open seven days a week and since July 2020 (when we reopened after lockdown) daily services have resumed. The parish offers daily services and weekend classes for children as well as social functions for a youth group and monthly lunches for those who may live alone. We have a hall which is let to groups and used by the congregation. Many people drop into the church as they pass the gate on Park Road or Geneva Street, for a moment of quiet prayer before facing the business of their day. For the sake of all who use our church, we now must look to make the building safer by making some very costly repairs. The estimated outlay for the work is in the region of £1.3million, please help us.

About the charity

The diocese is part of the worldwide Catholic Church covering Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, part of the Province of Westminster. It is made up of 52 parishes which provide liturgical, spiritual, social action and pastoral services to its parishioners and everyone who wishes to engage with them. The Cathedral church of the diocese is St John the Baptist in Norwich and the diocese is also home to England’s National Catholic Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. The diocese provides a Catholic education through 26 schools across East Anglia. In its current representation the diocese was formed in 1976 by a decree of Pope Paul VI, and in that time has had four bishops, the current one being Bishop Alan Hopes, residing at Poringland, where the small central curia staff team are also based. The charitable purpose is the advancement of the Catholic faith within the diocese and for the service and support of charitable works and objects promoted by the Catholic Church. The diocese provides for the religious needs of the Catholic population in East Anglia and plays a full role in participating with other churches, faiths and public organisations in promoting an ethos and attitude among the general population, designed to encourage and develop mutual cooperation, social cohesion and dialogue for the benefit of the community as a whole and in particular the poor and most vulnerable. You can find out more at www.rcdea.org.uk

Donation summary

Total raised
£3,902.73
Online donations
£3,902.73
Offline donations
£0.00
Direct donations
£3,902.73
Donations via fundraisers
£0.00

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